I write this sitting in a salt cave in Brentford, of all places. It is not an actual cave – I don’t think there are such things in this part of west London. It is a room full of salt, all over the walls and soft beneath your feet, like sand. And into this room is pumped, essentially, salty air (there is more to it than that). I was brought here by a good friend of mine, who has not long turned 60, and is in otherwise rude health. But he has a lung condition, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which, in the unsettling language of these troubled times, I dare say would constitute an underlying health condition.

Salt therapy is believed by many to be good for respiratory issues, skin conditions and relaxation. My friend suggested I try it when I told him about my nose. It has been the bane of my life. I can’t breathe very well out of it, you see. I’ve got a theory, comprehensively untested, that this is because I’m from Birmingham. I think we might speak the way we do because we’re all as congested as the elevated section of the M6 as it passes over Spaghetti Junction.

I am weary of being told by practitioners of yoga, mindfulness and so on that nasal breathing is fabulously calming because of its connection with the parasympathetic nervous system, or something. I’m sure this is true for clear-passaged people, and good luck to them. But if I try to breathe exclusively through my nose, soon the only part of my nervous system I’m connecting with is the bit that senses I’m close to death. At night, when I sleep on my left side, my right passage clears but my left bungs up totally, and vice versa. I thrash around a lot.

I’ve tried every spray, inhalation and rinsing regime going. In desperate times, as a kid, my mum would occasionally heat up some plum brandy and hover it under my nose for me to sniff. Do not try this at home. The fumes are savage. You could probably achieve a similar sensation by getting two bits of electrical flex, inserting them into a wall socket and shoving the other ends up your nostrils. Once the screaming died down, I could savour complete nasal clarity for as long as five precious minutes.

When I was 20, sick of snuffling my way through college, I went to see an ear, nose and throat specialist. More sprays were prescribed, all to no avail. In the end, the doctor suggested cauterising the lining of my nose (or something like that) to sort things out. I looked up cauterise in my dictionary: “To burn or destroy with a caustic substance, hot metal implement etc,” it said. I couldn’t really see how that would help matters, but what did I know? The operation was awful and the aftermath miserable. It eventually earned me a year or two of clear breathing and then things gradually went back to square one.

Now, more than 30 years later, still in search of clarity, I think I may finally have found a route to it in a Brentford salt cave. Who’d have thought it? I am hoping all that salt air won’t affect my hypertension, but I’m too scared to take a big, deep, nasal breath and ask the question.